This page was last Updated 3-21-08.
INTRODUCTION - A
This posting supplements the second chapter in Countering Polarization a book that I have published and is available now from Xlibris.com. Paragraphs from this posting have been incorporated in that book. This posting describes religion from a sociological perspective, examining it as an institution - a collection of traditions, norms (expected ways of behaving), beliefs, sacred writings, and so on. Then it examines spirituality from a variety of perspectives. Sacred writings are examined from this perspective and all this is examined from the point of view of how changing times affect religious institutions.
Religion is a social institution containing buildings and schools, sacred books, traditional norms of behavior, rituals, and ceremonies. All of these components provide a transcendental perspective that guides and motivates persons to nurture, educate, care for, and serve others in their families and in their larger communities. In this way, ideally, the community functions for the benefit of all, each helping each other. This function of an ideal community is (in part) the source of what some religious persons call the Grace of God. Grace has other sources related to spiritual forces within the individual believer and spiritual practices provided by religious services, teachers, and so on. It is the community that helps those in need by providing such services as: help in building houses, charitable giving, delivering hot meals to the homebound, counseling, etc. Religion has been the source through the ages, by virtue of its stories, rituals, ceremonies and services, that presents moral standards for behavior and standards that govern defense of the community and conservation (stewardship of the natural ecosystem). Yet these standards internalized within the human mind also contribute to spiritual aspects of Grace and relating to the transcendent.
With the increasing size of populations and the advances in science and technology, many religious stories began to lose their influence. For increasing numbers, scientific research provided the new basis for trust in their future. If religion is interpreted in ways that preserve the intent of the stories and the stories are revised according to changing times, then religion can still function well. However, increasing desire for efficiency led to bureaucracies and decreases in the human contacts and relationships so essential for developing understanding and empathy for others.
In small tribal communities the religious leaders oversaw systems of education and justice, but as the size and diversity of communities and bureaucratic organizations increased, they sought freedom from restrictive traditions of the old religion. Societal institutions of public education, the economy, political institutions, legal and jurisprudence institutions have all expanded and become more secular as knowledge increased. Therefore, religious institutions tended to lose influence over the well integrated and coherent functioning of these organizations.
I believe that increasing faith in science and technology has weakened the spiritual aspect of faith which includes the idea of relating to the transcendent. The lack of a good relationship with caring others is displayed in many lonely and bored adolescents. One response to the need for supportive and trusted relationships by teenagers, in some cases, is to join a neighborhood gang. Such loneliness is especially found in Western societies that value independence, freedom, and self-sufficiency. Carried to extremes in highly competitive societies many persons feel alone and are at a loss for how to become involved in what Scott Peck called authentic communities.
HOW MIGHT WE EXPLAIN TRANSCENDENCE? - B
If one feels exposed to the influence of a transcendent force, what does she or he feel?
Recent publications in the field of psychology and sociology help us to understand better, religious phenomena in the areas of traditions and spirituality. They help us relate psychology to theology in a way where knowledge in both fields increases and becomes more credible. The large numbers of good books on this topic indicate the extent of interest in this area. Especially helpful is James W. Fowler's 1996 book "Faithful Change - The Personal and Public Challenges of Postmodern Life", from which there are some excerpts in my CHAPTER 1. Also helpful is a book by Malidoma Patrice Somé, - Of Water and The Spirit.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines transcendent as follows: “surpassing others; preeminent or supreme. Lying beyond ordinary perception”; in philosophy: Transcending the Aristotelian categories, and in Kant's theory of knowledge, being beyond the limits of experience and hence unknowable.
Transcendent, to some, means something larger than the person, overarching the person; going beyond the empirical world. From another point of view, the power of the federal government transcends that of the state government and the state transcends the local. Marcus Borg, in his book, "The God We Never Knew - Beyond Dogmatic Religion To a More Authentic Contemporary Faith" (pp. 26-27), wrote: "The transcendence of God refers to God's "going beyond" the universe, God's otherness, God as more than the universe." After the 17th century, "The meaning of transcendence changed from referring to the moreness and mystery of God...to God as spatially distant from the world."
There are at least two levels of transcendence that I will focus on herein. One is the religious one wherein the transcendent force or creator is the all-powerful God, Yahweh or Allah. The other is a more secular, less powerful aspect that focuses on a sense of something larger than the individual, such as a transcendent supportive community, or a national government.
NOTE: Someone has pointed out that "transcendent" is the adjective and "transcendence" is the noun. My definition would be as follows.
Transcendent can be defined as - ecstatic awareness of contact with a deeper consciousness within the person, an emotion of joy, sometimes beyond rational thought and self-control, at other times a feeling that one is enveloped with a communal spirit or a religious Spirit that is larger than one's self, a Spirit that transcends one's self. Such an awareness, or consciousness, might be reaching a higher level of understanding, in touch with a new model (paradigm) of reality or a feeling of union with God. This definition also includes the idea of an image of God that is within each individual. For some, this internal God is called the Holy Spirit or an internalized Jesus.
Several examples are listed below. They start with a lower level of transcendence and go to a higher one.
1. A runner who in training betters her past times seems to reach a higher plateau of performance. This feeling can occur during a run or from month-to month as training and exercise improve aerobic capacity and muscle strength. During a run, release of serotonin in the brain can produce a runner's high that chemically, is somewhat similar to that which occurs during an ecstatic experience. This is a feeling wherein all parts of the body feel in synch and one feels that they can run forever. Reaching a new plateau of performance generates a feeling of transcending one's past capabilities. One is now in a class of better runners.
2. Archimedes, when he made a discovery about buoyancy in the bathtub is said to have exclaimed, "Eureka, I found it!" This feeling of transcendence can happen after contemplating a subject and understanding for the first time a new idea or relationship of ideas. One feels a joy and has a glimpse of some new power or a new paradigm to comprehend a new larger, more-encompassing, relationship between physical forces. Similarly this could occur when developing a new theory of social behavior.
3. If a player on a ball-team is involved in a game wherein the whole team played their best and they came from behind to win, playing better than ever before, then a feeling after the game is of transcendence one that might evoke the ecstatic expression "Wow!" Team spirit was at its highest, as if something came over the team to help them win in that way. The community spirit of the team soared to a new height. That spirit gives each player the feeling that the team is larger than any one player and the team supports each player and the player feels part of a greater whole. No one player could have won the game by himself.
4. Another example of transcendence occurs when one has felt at one with a particular group of people, or felt her self to be in tune with the cosmos. This feeling can happen at one level after contemplating a concept and understanding for the first time a new idea or relationship of ideas. One feels a joy and has a glimpse of some new power to comprehend the meaning of faith or the meaning of a relationship with God. This feeling might last for only a short time, until one gets involved doing something else. It is something like a mountaintop experience, seeing the layout of land features below, in a new spatial relationship and connectedness than one can see from the foot of the mountain. This feeling of joy is similar to the “JOY and WOW!” which Scott Peck described in "The Different Drum", the joy that members of an authentic community feel when they first realize that their group has reached to the level of an authentic community. The community members know each other, respect each other's differences, and can reach workable compromises on issues that will divide and polarize inauthentic or pseudo communities.
HOW HUMANS RELATE TO THE TRANSCENDENT - C
The primary concept of God in the three monotheistic religions is that God has infinite and absolute power and that God established the Process of Creation/Evolution. This latter image of God is so complex that no human can grasp even a tenth of that process in his or her mind. Thus humans imagine or create their own image of God in their own minds. These concepts of God transcend mere anthropomorphic images that many humans naturally rely on in their conceptualization of God and they are limited by the languages that guide the thinking of human beings. Even though God is imagined by some to have supreme power, many people are concerned that God does not save people from predicaments in which they find themselves. Whether God does so act depends upon the interpretation of the observer. How do we interpret the acts, or interventions, of God? "Why do bad things happen to good people?" For centuries there have been debates over whether God maintains and manages the process of creation continually up to the present or whether God created the process and now it runs on its own.
There is another way in which humans conceptualize God. That was described by Al-Ghazali in the year 1058, by Marcus Borg in 1997, and by many others as an internalized God. Others call this approach: "the God within each person". This latter approach to God fills a hole left in our mental web of relationships to caring others that every human needs to fill in one way or another. Some Christians internalize what they know about the character of Jesus and identify this as the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of Jesus. Many others internalize an image of Muhammad or God (which they name Allah), or Yahweh. But these images vary from person to person. Even though they might not realize it, their image of God, whether a God within or a remote God in Heaven that represents the Creator God is their own mental creation based on holy stories that they have heard or read in the Bible and/or Quran and the Sunnah.
NOTE: Bill Moyers Program called "NOW", broadcast in Colorado on 1-3-03, was a great program. It is a Panel Discussion entitled "Whose God?"
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_whosegod.html
This transcript is an excellent supplement to my thoughts in this short essay. Or, this essay, in some ways, is a supplement to Moyer's discussion/interviews.
ECSTATIC EXPERIENCES - COMMUNICATING WITH GOD - D
Understanding the feelings of ecstasy (joy, awe, and wow) that occur when experiencing transcendence is important in understanding how faith in a belief system is developed. The belief system can be either religious or political.
Bishop Spong, in his book, "Why Christianity Must Change or Die", has an interesting discussion of transcendence on page 130-131. Spong discussed, in detail, the problems of early Christianity as preserved in much of the sacred writings and doctrines of Christianity. He ends with a description of a proposal on how Christianity must change to restore faith in an immanent God. I translate what Spong wrote relying on Wesley’s Quadrilateral (described later in this chapter).
The internalized image of God or the God within is one end of the human - God relationship or interconnection. It is the human reaching out to a God that transcends him. The transcendent image of God is the concept of God reaching from an infinite dimension down to communicate with the human. The communication from God reaches the human through the human’s unconscious and conscious feelings and inspirations that the human has at that moment. These feelings and inspirations are the net result of traditions, practices, sacred stories, and reason that that particular human has experienced, all mixed together. The event is an ecstatic experience.
Another way of saying the foregoing is that the message that the human receives from the transcendent God is none other than those feelings and inspirations (the ecstasy). The traditions, practices, stories, reasoning and experiences transcend the individual’s consciousness and generate the message in what some describe as an ecstatic experience.
I believe that my concept of a hardwired proclivity, as discussed in CHAPTER 1 in my E-book, is compatible with Spong's proposed basis for change. In fact it might complement some of his ideas.
Relating to God involves the idea of internalization. Whether the individual recognizes it or not, internalization of a caring-other occurs, for example, when one internalizes his mother, a favorite teacher, on another caring person. These persons are used in part as role models. Famous people who have been caring and accomplished much by so doing also can be internalized. A list includes persons such as: M.L.King, Mandela, Gandhi, Badshaw Khan, Jesus, or God. Khan's story is described in Section L of Chapter 13.
The word "Spirit", for some, is related to what Marcus Borg calls "the God within". Some say "The Spirit (with a capital S) dwells within us".
I personally relate to both the transcendent and the God-within approaches. Remember that transcendent means primarily a being or power that is larger than the individual and surrounds the individual. It can refer to a supportive community, to a CEO of the company by which one is employed, to an all knowing and powerful God imagined to be in Heaven, and also to an image of such a God internalized within the individual. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, in his chapter entitled: "God: The Reality to Serve, Love and Know" in the book "God at 2000", edited by Marcus Borg and Ross Mackenzie, discussed many aspects of relating to and knowing about God. On pages 88 & 89, he discussed "that God is at once transcendent and immanent. ...in the context of the modern world, in which so many seek the divine as immanent, while rejecting the transcendent, it is important to realize that there is no possibility of experiencing the immanent before surrendering oneself totally to the transcendent".
In Christianity, Jesus is a supreme role model and, in my view, Jesus is easier to relate to than a Creator God. Centuries ago and scores of years after the death of Jesus, the relationship between Jesus and God was strengthened to the point where even today many who call themselves Christians relate to an internalized Jesus as God. So doing de-emphasizes or counter-balances the creator aspect of God.
Interestingly, Seyyed Hossein Nasr in "The Heart of Islam", on p. 5, The Quran accentuates God's nearness to us, stating that He is closer to us than ourselves and that He is present everywhere ...(surah 2:115). The traditional religious life of a Muslim is based on a rhythmic movement between the poles of transcendence and immanence..." As I see it immanence does not deny transcendence. On the top of p. 6, Nasr wrote: "Striving after the realization of that oneness (of God), or tawhid, is the heart of Islamic life; and the measure of a successful religious life is the degree to which one is able to realize tawhid, which means not only oneness, but also the integration of multiplicity into unity." The multiplicity that Nasr is talking about is captured by the ninety-nine names or characteristics that Muslims use to define their God.
The process of creation aspect of God and the God within both play a role as guides for human behavior; behavior such as caring for others in one's community and those outside the community and also being good stewards of our planet Earth and the space beyond. Unfortunately selfish concerns and exclusivist attitudes harm the good intentions of the process of creation.
Those Christians who relate to Jesus as God also use Jesus' actions during his life as models for good and moral behavior. There is much information about the life of the Prophet Muhammad, both in the Quran and the hadiths (stories about the life of The Prophet Muhammad). Thus, Christians and Muslims each have their own models to follow and try to emulate. Harvey Cox wrote, in his book "Many Mansions" (p. 32) that for some Muslims, Jesus is sometimes even depicted as a kind of supreme exemplar of what is meant by "submission to God..."
THE IDEA OF SPIRIT - E
Nelson Thayer, in his book "Spirituality and Pastoral Care" defines spirit and spirituality on page 13 and in his Chapter 2. He wrote: "In the most general sense, spirituality has to do with how we experience ourselves in relation to what we designate as the source of ultimate power and meaning in life and how we live out this relationship. Spirituality is not merely inner feelings; it has to do with the integration and coherence of ourselves as experiencing and acting persons." He goes on, on the next page, to say that formulas for public worship, religious education, sermons, "...structures of community and fellowship, social action and charity are all formative and expressive of spirituality." He wrote, on page 31: "...thinking about "spirit" must be continually informed by depth psychology, because depth psychology provides a thoroughgoing analysis of the way we become the kinds of persons we become and what keeps us that way." On page 62 he wrote that one way "spirit" has come to be used in a religious sense, refers "specifically to the human capacity for experience of, response to, participation in, and union with the transcendent". (This capacity is similar to what I called "hard-wired" in CHAPTER 1.)
Therefore, as I see it, the transcendent can refer to a God (external as a cosmic force and/or an internalized image of an immanent, and all-powerful God). Transcendent also can refer to an authentic and supportive community, larger than any one person, in which one actively participates. For example, as mentioned above, one's community spirit can be strengthened or turned-on during active involvement with a baseball team, or participating in a united community effort to build a community swimming pool.
Note that the word "spirituality" mainly refers to: the relationship with the One God, or to one's relationship with the transcendent Cosmic Force; rather than merely to a community. Even though one's community transcends the individual, and one can experience ecstasy after the community ball team wins the series, it is not the level of ecstasy one reaches during a feeling of transcendence in union with the universe.
A book that has given me a much deeper understanding of the spiritual aspects of life in contrast to life in a post-enlightenment modern society is "Of Water and the Spirit" by Malidoma Patrice Somé. Malidoma means one who befriends a stranger and enemy. He was born in the Dagara area of Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) in 1956, in NW Ghana and the area North and West of that. At the age of 4 he was taken by a Jesuit priest and imprisoned in a school to learn to be a "black" Catholic priest. He escaped at age 19 and returned to his village, but was considered contaminated by the sickness of the colonial - modern way of life. Eventually, after going through several weeks of initiation in the wilderness he was able to reintegrate the two parts of his spirit or soul and obtained two PhD's (Sorbonne and Brandeis). He taught literature for three years at the University of Michigan, is now based in California, and travels and lectures widely. He writes well and has penetrated the life of indigenous peoples so well that he provides the reader a deeper understanding of the wholeness of that life. I see his autobiography as being helpful in appreciating aspects of the sacred in Islam and the other two monotheistic religions. Somé's book is a good one to accompany reading of "The Heart of Islam" by Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
Many primitive tribes, who lived so close to nature, had very strong attachments to the sacred and their poems and prayers contain many of the main points that Seyyed Hossein Nasr discussed in his writings.
For more on Spirit and Spirituality see Caplan's book - Halfway Up the Mountain.
If we become "hardwired" to need a relationship with a transcendent power, one response is to develop a relationship with an internalized image of God. The image can be of a God in Heaven or a God within. Working out this relationship and maintaining this relationship is helped considerably, if one is committed to a religious community, whether it is a weekly discussion group, a church, or some other religious community.
On p. 50, Thayer quotes from Augustine: "...our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee."
In the Bible, Romans 8:5 says: "but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit."
On pages 160-161 in Karen Armstrong's book, "The History of God" she wrote about how for Muslims, the "sacred traditions emphasize God's immanence and presence in the believer"...
Surveys summarized in a 1995 book by Wade Clark Roof, "Spiritual Marketplace" show that 55% of Americans thought of themselves as strong believers in God, 25% as having occasional doubts and 18% as not always sure what to believe, but they are exploring. I believe that the communities to which one belongs influence the symbols and language that are the bases for one's thinking and for relating to God, whether one believes in a God up in heaven or a God within, (an exoteric view of God or an esoteric view).
According to John B. Cobb, Jr.'s book on John Wesley, "Grace and Responsibility - A Wesleyan Theology for Today", page 170, there is a quote from Donald Thorsen's book on The Wesleyan Quadrilateral (pp. 130-131) as follows. "Wesley...doubted the truth of scripture, for example, concerning the instantaneous nature of conversion by faith. He had not experienced the assurance of a personal conversion and knew of few who had." This raises a question in my mind. Do some liberals become more orthodox and traditionalist, after a conversion experience? Such conversions, in some cases, can include some outdated premises.
Cobb wrote on p. 170 that Wesley more frequently used scripture to critique claims arising from experience. He shared fears about "enthusiasm", and was very skeptical of the value of ecstatic experiences and claims to special revelations, especially after his Aldersgate experience, he had great confidence that experience would always confirm scripture. "Wesley sometimes used language that would satisfy some conservative-literalist followers. In his Preface to "Notes on the New Testament" he wrote: "The language of the messengers, also, is exact in the highest degree; for words which were given them accurately answered the impression made upon their minds...""
Cobb, on page 172 wrote: "...there is value in the idea that believers perceive differently from others. They perceive spiritual realities that others do not see."
On pages 40-41 in the 1980 Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church the pioneers of Methodism (Wesley, et al.) stated: "As to all opinions that do not strike at the root of Christianity, we think and let think." "But even as they were fully committed to the principles of toleration and doctrinal pluralism, they were equally confident that there is a "marrow" of Christian truth that can be identified and that must be conserved.
The Wesleyan quadrilateral, as it appeared in the 1972 Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church, "... states that the living core of the Christian faith "stands revealed in Scripture, illumined by Tradition, vivified in personal (and corporate) Experience, and confirmed by Reason."" (This last quote is from page 156 in Cobb's book.)
They were very much aware, of course, that God's eternal Word never has been, nor can be, exhaustively expressed in any single form of words." [Note: The parenthetical expression (and corporate), in the foregoing paragraph, was added, I believe, in the 1992 Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church. Wesley's famed quadrilateral consists of the following four words. I remember them by the word "REST"; Reason, Experience, Scripture, and Tradition. John Cobb, in Chapter 8 of his book "Grace and Responsibility", defines the four terms in depth.
Recently, a friend has described how a group of college students spent many hours discussing implications and interpretations of Wesley's quadrilateral. Changes in the relative importance of these four components of a well-founded faith do occur over time. Some specialists in mega-churches attribute their growth to a blend of entertainment and "uplifting songs and sermons" for a generation of young persons who grew up in a youth culture saturated with entertainment and consumerism. Young teens, at a stage in their lives when they are experimenting at forming their own personal identities, are exploited by marketing that provides a great variety of superficial identifiers. These teens are attracted to groups that can re-enforce their identity as they find some degree of support from these groups. The mega-churches skillfully use the needs of these young people to attract them to join. I personally believe that many, though not all of these "corporate experiences" are provided by what M. Scott Peck would classify as inauthentic communities. See his book, "The Different Drum." This is a consideration that might help to explain why some of these groupies leave the mega-churches after a few years and join smaller mainline church communities.
I believe the four concepts in Wesley's Quadrilateral relate closely to those described by Seyyed Hossein Nasr in his book, "Knowledge and the Sacred". For example, Nasr's term "sapiential knowledge" is knowledge derived from experiences such as tasting. I believe that it is partly symbolic, which I interpret as the result of emotion-evoking experiences. Such experiences are recalled when one revisits the place where the experience first occurred. Sapiential knowledge contributes to feelings and emotions. It thus contributes to what is felt as sacred to the person who Experiences the joy or sadness that occurred. Scripture, or the holy stories, sensitize one to the emotions of joy from such experiences. Tradition guides the believer along the path (illumines the path) to help the believer get into the appropriate frame of mind to experience the ecstasy. Eventually after freeing oneself from daily and egoistic concerns, one might experience ultimately a union with the Whole Reality - God.
Nasr described how the West has surrendered to modernity, transferring much of its faith from the spiritual - sapiential way of knowing - to the rational, objective and scientific way of knowing. Thus it has lost important traditional practices and experiences that are, in part, essential for relating to the spiritual and to God.
On page 232 of his book "Faithful Change - The Personal and Public Challenges of Public Life" James Fowler wrote: "Schooling (in America) tends to neglect the right hemisphere of the brain: the stimulation of imagination, the formation of deep going emotional patterns that underlie commitments to love of God and neighbor." I have added the parenthetical expression. I interpret this to imply that opening one's heart to Jesus is a right-brain activity.
We in the West get involved in status seeking and status display which are the wrong kind of experiences because they are tied to the ego. They do not contribute to strengthening one's faith and developing a repertoire of experiences that help one relate to transcendent concepts. As I see it, this trend has invaded Western Christianity and reduces the capability of our society to overcome the doubts, fears, and ambiguity that come with change. Yet, the change that we are witnessing is ever more rapid in the postmodern and globalizing world in which we live. The result is that increasing numbers of people find their faith inadequate to counter ambiguity and they fall prey to extremist demagogues who preach a return to the old religion. But some of the traditions in the old religion have lost relevancy and weaken the repertoire of experiences that contribute to sapiential knowledge.
The loss of the sacred that Nasr wrote about, is also reflected in a Native American - Ojibway prayer. Some say that the Islamic faith is attractive to some Native Americans because of its emphasis on the Sacred.
It would be a very rewarding to contrast Cobb's book with Nasr's. Although Nasr's "Knowledge and the Sacred" was written in 1981 and Cobb's "Grace and Responsibility" was written in 1995, their points of view show some similar approaches to basic aspects of the spiritual side of religion. They both discuss responsibility and its relation to freedom. There are similarities in the area of spiritual growth described by the quadrilateral and there are similarities in tolerance toward other faiths since we all worship the same God. On page 293 Nasr wrote: "... all paths lead to the same summit."
Another rewarding contrast would be to try and blend the ideas of Nasr with those that Charles Kimball discussed in his new book, "When Religion Becomes Evil." Nasr, on page 182 in his book "Knowledge and the Sacred", wrote that intelligence is knowledge of the Absolute. Nasr frequently uses the term Absolute to refer to God. This term bothers me, because I believe that only a few believers can figuratively climb the mountain to have an experience of union with the Ultimate Reality or Absolute. Caplan in her book "Halfway Up the Mountain" described how many Americans, raised on fast food and drive-in services, try to reach the top during a weekend retreat. However, most spiritual leaders say that it takes years to build a repertoire of experiences and traditions to help one reach their peak experience. The Absolute and Perfect Truth does exist, but some use those terms to capture the minds and souls of their followers, and lead them astray from the True Path. Kimball wrote that when a religious leader claims that he knows: the absolute truth-the one path to God or the only correct way of interpreting a sacred text; then he implies that all other truth claims and interpretations are blasphemy. In such cases that leader's religion is becoming evil. Such is the approach of demagogues who attract persons who have low tolerance for ambiguity and fear the changes that they confront in their increasingly diverse societies. We have such demagogues in American Christianity and Islam has their share also.
SACRED WRITINGS AND THEIR STORIES LAY THE GROUNDWORK FOR RELATING TO GOD - F
People tend to relate to and pray to an all-powerful creator God more so during times of great despair. However, I believe that the meta-narratives (grand stories, such as the creation stories and Moses leading the Hebrews across the Red Sea) concerning such an image of God in the Holy Books need to be interpreted as metaphors rather than literally. In this way they would be more relevant and fit better with present-day scientific beliefs about the cosmos. Marcus Borg discussed the role of metaphor in his book, "Reading the Bible Again for the First Time".
Some people who believe in a personal or human-like image of God pose the question, "Does this image of God have to be all powerful?" I don't believe so. I feel that, say for a Christian, knowing about God and the life of Jesus from the Bible, as we do through a non-literal imaginative and educated reading of Scripture, can help us relate to God through Jesus. We can communicate with this internalized Jesus by asking the question: "What would Jesus do in these circumstances?"
In Islam a relationship with God, or the God within is referred to as "tariqa" and is described in Jane Smith's book on pages 33-34, in a section on the life of a woman mystic named Rabi'a al-Adawiyya, born around 717 A.D.
A different response is the following. It is interesting to consider the title of Harold S. Kushner's book, "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" and consider what happens to people who believe in a personal God. Armstrong, on page 209 of "A History of God" wrote: "Yet a personal God can become a grave liability. He can be a mere idol carved in our own image, a projection of our limited needs, fears and desires. We can assume that he loves what we love and hates what we hate, endorsing our prejudices instead of compelling us to transcend them. When he seems to fail to prevent a catastrophe or seems even to desire a tragedy, he can seem callous and cruel."
Armstrong used the foregoing in her introduction to Chapter 7, "The God of the Mystics" wherein she discussed mystical and more spiritual approaches to a transcendent God. A response to the decline of a personal God from the foregoing point of view is that God is too complex for any human being to comprehend in His entirety. Therefore one cannot explain why something bad happened to a good person. On the other hand a more mystical approach to a transcendent concept of God helps the victim of tragedy seek to relate to this God and by so doing perhaps learn how best to respond to the tragedy and make the best of it.
NOTE: In response to the image of an all-powerful creator God, many people fragment this image in their mind. That is the only way that we limited humans can grasp the infinite. For a discussion of the implications of this fragmenting see Chapter 6.
Does this, in some way, energize Sorokin's cyclical aspect of civilizations? Sorokin used different terms to describe the oscillation many cultures pass through from emphasizing the rational/scientific to emphasizing the spiritual. I believe these oscillations are related to unbalances among the four components of Wesley’s quadrilateral. Sorokin's cyclical theory of civilizations is summarized in: P. Sorokin's ideas about cyclical approaches to reality.
Pitirim Sorokin has been a prolific writer about cultural dynamics or the dynamics of institutions. See more about Sorokin at: (www.notess.com/cn/sorokin.htm) Cyclical Approaches to Reality.
SPIRITUALITY AND THE BRAIN; NEURO-PSYCHOLOGY - G
The new field of study and research called neuro-theology provides some information that is useful here. Newsweek magazine for 1-29-01, on page 59, had an article that indicates the brain seems to have a specific region wherein spiritual experiences and transcendent experiences move the person to a deeper state of consciousness. The person is liberated from the many thoughts that tie one to daily concerns of living in an organized world of expectations, concerns, and the like. A well written article by Sharon Begley in the May 7, 2001 issue of Newsweek magazine, page 52, entitled "Religion and the Brain" goes further in describing how certain parts of the brain become much less active during esoteric experiences and traces circuits that are active during meditation and prayer, when the brain loses or decreases its ability to distinguish between self and not-self.
A BELIEF SYSTEM FOR CHANGING TIMES - H
To summarize the foregoing in other words, people need some belief system, or ideology, in the form of a political system and/or a religious system, a system or combination of systems that can generate hope for a better future. This system also must provide guidance and generate progress along a path leading to a stronger relationship to God. Mutual trust, on a nationwide basis, is missing and has been missing in many nations for centuries. Building mutual trust is an essential building block for a modern democracy. Responsibility for safeguarding mutual trust lies in a free populace, a fair court system and a good constitution, one that protects basic human rights. Literalist-orthodox approaches should mix with progressive approaches oriented to maintaining an effective constitution, but change is always needed to keep up with changing times.
I believe that many persons who are susceptible to extremist, regressive, approaches have, perhaps, early in life lost a close and supportive relationship to a caring other, perhaps through divorce, death, or drug addiction on the part of their significant other. Retreating from involvement in pluralistic environments can hinder a person’s abilities to appreciate the perspectives of others who are different. It is desirable that research check out this belief. My belief comes from the idea that the need for such a relationship is hard-wired into the brain.
Karen Armstrong, in her book "The Battle for God" wrote, on page 370: "This battle for God was an attempt to fill the void at the heart of a society based on scientific rationalism". The modern era in the West weakened the traditional bases for trusting in God. The result of this weakening can be as traumatic as the loss of a caring and supportive relationship with a caring other.
Can a person change their images of God as they get older and as science explains more of the unexplainable? If so, in what way should they change them? Many do change their image of God, as they get older. We need to get past the pre-adolescent stage of following specific rules because this traps many in a literalist-orthodox mode and makes them susceptible to being misled and used by selfish dogmatic leaders.
We need to internalize our caring authority figures and their standards. We need to be able to apply critical reasoning to circumstances and make our own decisions with help from our authentic community. We need to be tolerant of diverse cultural traditions, yet we must become familiar enough with them so that we can tolerate differences and evaluate which cultures generate higher stages of faith development and love in their members. We all need to reach higher stages of faith development.
Can we imagine a relationship to an internal God, and yet capture the benefits of the transcendent aspect? I believe that we can.
In postmodern times, of great diversity in ethnicity and cultures, Christians have been called to love our different neighbors. The Power of Love will win out in the end, but when young children are brainwashed to hate others with different beliefs, to dream of a good life in heaven, and to subjugate and exploit those who are of female gender, there can be no peace.
We have to educate the children and reeducate the adults, who have been brainwashed, to maintain a working balance between, 1) placing their faith in science, in those domains where science and reason reign, and 2) placing their faith in a loving, caring and nurturing internalized God, where His domain reigns. Freedom in such a setting can make democracy work and over time, hatred, fear, killing and religious wars will decrease.
A detailed bibliography is accessible at: Bibliography.
A detailed Table of Contents is accessible at: Contents.
© Copyright: by Charles Notess, 2004-7. "Fair use" encouraged.